BRATTLEBORO — Peter Lindenfeld - father of potter, Brattleboro Clayworks co-founder, ceramics teacher and longtime resident Naomi Lindenfeld - will give a virtual reading of his new book, Fragments of Time, presented by independent bookseller Everyone's Books.
In a news release, the author said the book traces his life “from a secure childhood in pre-war Vienna to the challenges of emigration, adaptation, and pursuits in science and in educational and social change.”
However, Lindenfeld said he has tried to make the book about more than himself. It is also about a time and its atmosphere. Readers will enjoy the stories built around the roller coaster of his life as a refugee as well as the ups and downs of his education, his work, and his personal life.
The reading, which will include images from his book, will be held on Sunday, Oct. 24, at 4 p.m. To register for this free event and get sent the Zoom link, visit bit.ly/635-lindenfeld.
The years immediately before and after World War II were a time of destruction of lives and futures, as well as a time of rebirth and rebuilding. Lindenfeld recounts his personal and often intimate experiences, a microcosm of life during a time spanning nearly a century.
The first 13 years of his seemingly stable atmosphere of childhood in Vienna is destroyed by the Anschluss, the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. With his mother, he fled Austria not long after.
The forced exodus led him first to Vancouver, and then to New York, building a life that melded his original culture with that of his new environment, creating a richness - in science and music, and in intellectual and political life - that transcended both.
After earning a Ph.D. in physics at Columbia University, Lindenfeld was a member of the physics department at Rutgers University for 46 years, retiring as distinguished professor.
His textbook, Physics: The First Science, was co-authored with Suzanne White Brahmia and published by the Rutgers University Press in 2011. He was awarded the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching by Rutgers, and the Robert A. Millikan medal by the American Association of Physics Teachers.
His research career parallels his activities in education and with high school teachers in the United States and in India. A focus of his work is to make physics less remote and its teaching more widely accessible and less abstract.
Peter Lindenfeld lives in Princeton, N.J., where he remains active in the Princeton Community Democratic Organization, which he co-founded in 1967.